Sunday, October 7, 2012

The only thing left now was the script. All I had to do was to expand the 48 minute pilot into 90 minutes.

Wrong.

After a story session with a half dozen friends and writers, it was decided to trash the script completely and start fresh. The reasoning was that the show had evolved over the years and was no longer the origin story that I needed it to be.

So now I finally had the money and momentum but no script. And I believe that above everything else, you need a solid script. Unfortunately, I was way too close to the story to start from scratch. I needed to delegate and I needed to think waaay outside the box, so I called my friend Tex Wall who lives outside the box on a daily basis.

Tex had written several spec scripts and had gobs of time, whereas I had virtually none. Together with Andrew Helm and more than a few late night story sessions at IHOP, we went through four drafts which took us about a year.

During that time, I worked like a dog on VFX jobs to save up enough money to take time off to shoot the film. Unfortunately, every time our start date got pushed because of rewrites, I would have to find another job, which would in turn interfere with the rewrites.

I also wasn't clear on an exact start date or how we were going to shoot the film. I originally thought we could do this over a span of eight weekends, but keeping a cast and crew together that long could be problematic. No, we had to run this like a regular show, over the course of several six day weeks. And we needed to choose a start date and stick to it.

July 23, 2012. It seemed the perfect time when everyone was free, locations were available, and Jess wasn't teaching. About that time I also decided that I was going to direct the film and Jess was going to produce (which she had never done before). And on top of everything else, Jess and I were married that May...

...so this was going to be an epic year one way or another. I called it "the year of scary".

What began in the summer of 2001 with an idea to produce a hour long pilot for a cable TV show featuring sword-slingin' vampire slayers, became a decade of developing one of the longest running web shows online, and one of the first shows based almost entirely on user content.

But after 10 years, I still hadn't shot the pilot. My original intent was to shoot a few episodes just to get our feet wet, but more and more episodes presented themselves, many of which were golden opportunities that I couldn't pass up. And the episodes were relatively easy to shoot and cost nothing. And then there was editing, web design, marketing, networking, contests, and other diversions, all of which were extremely time consuming. And life occasionally got in the way which made it virtually impossible to take on larger projects, namely the pilot.

And yes, I was procrastinating big time. I tried. I even held an official casting years ago at the old Westside Fencing Center where over 60 swordsmen and actors showed (which I still have yet to edit into a Hunted episode). But once again, life got in the way and nothing came of it. Ten years later, I still hadn't shot the pilot and it looked like it was never going to happen. I had been talking about it for so long that no one took me seriously anymore.

To compensate, I started shooting longer episodes in HD - the last three were 20 minutes each. And each of them were shot in a single weekend with no budget ("Con Job 2" and "Slayercon"). And they were damn good. It was then I realized that shooting the pilot was within the realm of possibility.

It wasn't until 2011 and the advent of Kickstarter did I realize that I could raise funding for the show, which would allow us to at least pay our actors. I also realized that in order to get people's attention, I wouldn't just shoot a pilot, I'd shoot a feature! It's what every web series aspires to, but no one thinks to take that step on their own. They would rather wait to get "picked up".

I quickly put together an extremely ambitious fundraising video on Kickstarter where I played 20 different versions of myself, and within a few months I had $20,000 and the backing of my friends at New Deal Studios to help produce the show.

Dammit. Now I had no choice. There was no backing out. I had to do this (providing we weren't hit with a major earthquake or meteor). What follows is over a year of development leading up to the 18 days of hell that is known as principal photography directing my first feature film.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Hey gang, so here's the latest update in our saga to get this film made, and why the title of our project has been officially updated from "Feature Film" to "Internet Epic".

In the past few months, Jess has assumed the role as our producer and has done an amazing job breaking down the script, organizing schedules, and finding some amazing locations. It's an extremely tough job when you consider that we're dealing with a professional working cast, and we can't afford to keep them from taking awesome gigs like Monique Ganderton being recruited to work on Iron Man 3 next week!

On top of everything else, we had decided months ago to make this a SAG New Media project. In the past, I would have never considered SAG for this budget. However, the New Media contracts are extremely simple and I've heard some great feedback from our affiliates who have shot Hunted episodes using the agreements. What's more, New Media has made it possible for filmmakers such as Ed Burns (Brothers McMullen) to shoot a feature for under $10K (Newlyweds) and show it at film festivals like Tribeca. So it seemed like a perfect fit for us - especially since we've been "New Media" for so many years and the film is tied directly into the internet series.

The only real downside to a New Media contract is that your initial release must be on the internet, which is fine by us. Most folks are watching feature films online these days, especially indie films, through services like Netflix and iTunes.

Unfortunately, four days before we were to begin principal photography, SAG announced that we were not a New Media project and redesignated us as "Theatrical" - a completely different contract with different pay rates, fees and rules. When asked why we no longer qualified for New Media, our new theatrical SAG rep told us it was because of running length of our project, which made no sense since we knew there was a precedent for feature films shot under the New Media agreement.

And unfortunately, the more we questioned the decision, the more our rep began using other excuses and employing strongarm techniques by telling us that if we didn't sign the new contract, she would make sure our project would never get approved. And even though we notified our cast that we would be holding off production until we figured things out, she still didn't trust us and called each of our actors (our friends) telling them not to work on our show. This apparently backfired when several of our actors took the opportunity to blast SAG for giving us a hard time.

Frustrated and overwhelmed, we once again turned to crowdsourcing our friends and fans for support, who responded with a outpouring of helpful suggestions - and lawyers! We heard a wealth of other horror stories and eventually learned that one of the hidden red flags for SAG New Media involved using the words "Feature Film", which appears in various places throughout our website. Thusly, we have since updated our website and designation or the project from "Feature Film" to "Internet Epic".

We have also learned that for SAG New Media status, they want to see a plan for online distribution. As it is, we had already been seen on Blip.tv, FunnyorDie, iTunes, Vimeo and of course Youtube, so we're not exactly sure what this means. If they're referring to a paying distributor, I'm not aware of anyone who will pay you money before they see a completed product. My plan is to follow the model set by Ed Burns, who used the aggreagtor Filmbuff.com to distribute his films to iTunes and VOD.

Just to be clear, our problem hasn't been with SAG New Media. Everyone we've talked to in that department has been extremely chill and helpful. Our problem has been one person in the theatrical department who has probably spent too many years dealing with sleazy producers trying to cheat actors out of their due, and doesn't quite realize that we're just trying to make a movie with our friends.

Regardless of what happens, we're still moving forward. Our goal is to work with SAG to resolve these issues as soon as possible. But if all else fails, nothing is keeping us from shooting this as a non-union project and letting the press know that SAG is not as indie-friendly as they would have you believe.

Monday, February 6, 2012

And I'm hoping this time around I've made enough money on VFX gigs to finally see me through production of the feature this summer!

It was a crazy schedule working VFX on "The Grey" which has been getting great reviews in theaters (you can see the sequence I worked on here at 1:35: http://youtu.be/gqP2o62sZMs), and then a commercial which was directed by Jon Favreau, which you can find here: http://youtu.be/1Dwrwgo-P-w

By crazy schedule, I mean 18 hour days working 7 days a week for 3 weeks. Not enough time to work on a script, much less do laundry. But now that I've recovered and I no longer have to wear swim trunks to work, I've spent the last couple weeks finishing what I'm hoping is the final draft of the script. It's still a bit long (107 pages), but I working on tightening it down to 90 pages and I'm hoping to have another couple meetings with our writers for a final polish.

And the script is looking pretty bitchin. Really happy with it, it's still very do-able, but it's gonna be quite a challenge. I'm confident enough this time around that I'm starting to look at casting and setting an actual date for principal photography.I also had a chance to work with our DP on a film called "Saving Santa" in Arizona. I was the VFX supervisor, and there's a chance I may be coordinating post production on the film through New Deal Studios while prepping The Hunted.

As far as the online series goes, we released our two part epic "SlayerCon" last year, which featured Hunted affiliates from Tampa and Oregon, along with myself, Anthony Delongis, Andrew Helm, Chris Villa, and Kyle Rowling (from Star Wars) in a crazy vamp-slaying romp through Las Vegas: http://youtu.be/fy_2edwK3ss

Thanks also goes to Andrew Helm for writing and playing with us onscreen as his alter-ego Kevin, John Debiase for taking on the overwhelming task of editing hours of footage with no script notes, and Jessica Cail for playing Mikey, herself on camera, and everything from PA, to AD, to inflatable dolphin wrangler.

But that's not all! In yet another Hunted first, Kendall Wells released our first NSFW version of "SlayerCon" which was shot at the same time: http://youtu.be/26Wh7A4ZuJA So we had two episodes crossing each other (three actually) while shooting at Combat Con, and I had no idea what he was up to other than it involved an inflatable dolphin named Squeakers which was summarily kidnapped by an intoxicated Kiwi Jedi: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Save-Squeakers/214138495295048

And if that's not enough, we incorporated all of this into an ARG (Alternate Reality Game) which we premiered at the infamous San Diego Comic Con (http://youtu.be/gJD9fBQtqSk). The players used an iphone app called SCVNGR to track and kill a vampire at Comic Con (Edward from our Con Job 2 episode). Along the way, the players received "Slayer in Training" t-shirts, Slayerade sports bottles, custom inflatable swords, sword training, and our grand prize - a walk-on role in the feature film. And I, for one, can't wait to see the "Geek Squad" in this film!

The next step for our online series is to incorporate our yearly contest into the film. Spoiler Alert: The ending of the film involves a plot by the vampires to wipe out all the slayers in the country and broadcast video of their extermination via a live feed. However, the slayers have been warned ahead of time and instead of a massacre, the live feed shows the slayers fighting back and wiping out all the vampires. This will be the subject of this year's contest, and winning episodes will not only receive a cash prize, but will be featured as part of the film.

So that's the plan so far. Things are still moving forward one step at a time. Thanks again to all of you for your patience and support!

Who We Are

The Hunted is a cross between "Buffy" and "Cops" where we attempt to prove the existence of vampires through our sword slinging, vampire slaying reality show web series.
Join us online at http://www.thehunted.tv